Canada

Taxing Wages: Country note for Canada

The average worker in Canada faced a tax burden on labour income (tax wedge) of 31.1% in 2013 compared with the OECD average of 35.9%. Canada was ranked 26 of the 34 OECD member countries in this respect.

Some examples of the results reflected in the Overview charts for Canada are:

The tax burden for the single average worker decreased by 1.8 percentage points from 32.9% to 31.1% between 2000 and 2013. Between 2009 and 2013, there was an increase of 0.6 percentage points.

The corresponding figures for the OECD were a decrease of 0.8 percentage points from 36.7% to 35.9% between 2000 and 2013 and an increase of 0.8 percentage points between 2009 and 2013.

The tax burden for the one-earner couple with 2 children at the AW level decreased by 4.4 percentage points from 23.1% to 18.7% between 2000 and 2013. Between 2009 and 2013, there was an increase of 2.1 percentage points.

The corresponding figures for the OECD were a decrease of 1.3 percentage points from 27.7% to 26.4% between 2000 and 2013 and an increase of 1.4 percentage points between 2009 and 2013.

The data used for the average and marginal tax wedges is taken directly from the "Tax Wedge Decomposition' dataset within the online OECD data warehouse: DotStat. The dataset includes the breakdown of the average and marginal tax wedges into five separate components as percentage of total labour cost: